Sundar Narayanan : Desi Engineer in California married to a Desi Engineer. This is a log of my travel experience, food reviews and life's "little" quirks. . .

Disclaimer : My thoughts on this site are not intended to cause physical emotional or financial harm to any person or thing mentioned in this site or to the reader and I take no responsibiilty for the same.. So read at your own risk!! I also hope this font is large enough to be considered legal and small enough not to make my blog ugly !

Friday, March 23, 2007

11 players 1100000000 fans !!

It is already stale news that India have lost their stake in the Cricket World Cup.

I actually went to a friends place and watched from noon to 1:15. Boy, was I disappointed. I saw 5 wickets fall within that space.

What infuriated me most was the transcript of the interview of the Indian Coach, Greg Chappell which I happened to read on Cricinfo.

In light of the fact that the coach of the Pakistan team has been murdered right after that team exited the world cup, is it even appropriate for the press to ask pointed questions to try and assign blame right after the match, knowing that there is a mob out there that is just waiting to lap up everything the press is going to dish out tomorrow ? Has the press no moral fibre?

It is this same press that takes these ordinary humans who are trying to play a game and escalates them to demi-god status. The same press is fed by advertising revenue from the very same sponsors who artificially inflate the worth of the players by giving them exhorbitant endorsement deals, publicity that would put movie actors to shame and way too much postive or negative focus to make or break their confidence and careers.

If the press were to put these players where they ought to be put, just players playing a game and if there is a law banning players from endorsing products or appearing in commercials, maybe things would improve. The press should actually point the fingers at themselves. They asked the Indian team coach if it is "time for a reality check?". It is time the press did a reality check on their role in this loss. They also asked the team captain "arent you answerable to your fans ?". HELL NO!! Movie actors play for their audience. Their end goal is box office success. Sportsmen play for the game. Their end goal is a victory against the other team! Not commercial success. Their game should not be linked to ratings or revenue!!

On a personal note, 1. I have made a promise to not watch or track cricket for the next 365 days! 2. There will be no requests to order the matches on Dish Network3. No checking Cricinfo4. No participation in water cooler gossip about things including and excluding Sehwag et. al. with the English, West Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans I know.5. There will be no joint reminiscing with my co-brother or my wife's cousins from down under either!

This is Sundar's sabatham(wow)! Yeah, I am the next Mangamma...

ps. The wife is happy that she does not have to cough up the $199 or $ 129 or $... for ordering the remaining matches! Did you see the way the price for the Super 8 package drop as the Indian Wickets fell ?!

pps. As a person who has watched cricket for this long, inspite of all the scandals, match fixing, the crappy performance of the team, etc., I also share some responsibility for fueling this out of control fire. As an Indian Cricket fan, I take responsibility for my part!! Hence this decision.

6 Comments:

I am not responsible for comments posted by others...
At 8:25 PM,
Anonymous wrote...

Finally, a sane analysis of the situation. I too was thinking in the lines of films and games. It seems like the media adds fuel to fire, just to sensationalize and sell. First, something must be done to curb media craziness.

-kajan

I am not responsible for comments posted by others...
At 9:26 PM,
RATHNA wrote...

Mr.Sundar will ur sabatham hold good if by chance Bermuda beats bangaldesha and india enters the last 8? Otherwise i do agree ur point about this press stuff.nice blog . keep it going.

I am not responsible for comments posted by others...
At 11:34 PM,
Kavi wrote...

I agree. But who is going to bell this cat ? Last week there was a 3 min "news?" item on sun TV headline news about a contest dinakaran newspaper (which is under the same owners as SUN TV) is running on world cup cricket and how prizes are being distributed in the form of pressure cookers, etc. !! this is headline news !! It should have been an advertisement! If you can slip in ads and promotions as news, what next ? This type of stuff has started happening in US also.. FOX news !! they are learnig a thing or two from SUN TV!

Rathna, India super 8 ponaalum sabatham sabathamE!

Kavi, I never thought of it as "being married to cricket". Based on your comment, things are highly unlikely to change!

Completely agree with you. Worst thing of all, there was a 'sepcial' show on CNN-IBN called 'Tryst with Disaster'. Bhupendra Chaubey, who is IBN's chief 'political' analyst was hosting the show. He was talking of India's twin losses like the destruction of the twin towers. Sad state of affairs. Have blogged about this issue too.